Nodler issued the following news release:
Sen. Gary Nodler (R-Joplin) today held a press conference to discuss the state’s Career Ladder Program and called on the governor to review official revenue estimates when they are released in December to see if there is a way to fund the program for the current year.
Career Ladder provides additional pay to teachers who take on extra duties. The state pays approximately 45 percent of Career Ladder funding, with individual school districts paying the remaining 55 percent.
Career Ladder funding recently came under scrutiny because the funding for the program is appropriated retroactively, meaning the funding for the 2009-10 school year will be decided during the upcoming 2010 legislative session. Sen. Nodler said this practice is inappropriate because one legislature can not bind a future legislature on appropriation matters. Teachers are therefore unsure of whether they will receive pay for the work they completed in the previous year.
“Since 1992, Career Ladder has been funded in a way that is contradictory to the budget process in our state, and this is the reason why the program’s funding is so unsure during this difficult budget year,” said Sen. Nodler. “We have the opportunity to put the funding for the program back on schedule, consistent with our constitutional appropriation process.”
State statute says that funding for the Career Ladder Program is to be placed in a “Career Ladder Forward Funding Fund,” so that teachers can receive compensation for their work. The fund was created in 1995 to try and end the practice of funding the program retroactively, but no action has been taken by any legislature to follow through with proactive funding.
Sen. Nodler said that legislators and budget analysts will have a better idea of available funding after a Consensus Revenue Estimate (CRE) is released in December. The annual CRE is a bipartisan figure established by state budget experts and outside consultants that provides one of the basic assumptions the governor and legislative leaders use to build Missouri’s budget.
Sen. Nodler today recommended that the best way to fix the practice of retroactive Career Ladder funding would be for the governor to ask for funding in his supplemental budget, which is traditionally proposed towards the beginning of each legislative session to address budget issues that were not passed or were not funded to the level of being sufficient for the whole year. “I am asking Governor Nixon to make clear to teachers and school districts in the supplemental budget process whether or not it is his intention to fund the current year’s Career Ladder Program in whole or in part,” said Sen. Nodler.
“Career Ladder funding for the current school year depends on several important questions: Do we have the money to fund the program, and, if we do, then how do we do it?” said Sen. Nodler. “If the governor believes there is enough revenue available to pay for some or all of this year’s Career Ladder expenditures and will request a supplemental appropriation, then I will support it, and I will vote for it.”
10 comments:
Randy, you and I both know that Career Ladder supports teachers doing extra duties outside of contract hours. Free tutoring- that is paid for by career ladder. Parent Night participation-career ladder. After school clubs- career ladder. Teachers make a basic salary (starting pay $23,000 with a college degree to pay for 174 contract days of work- 7:45 am to 3:00 pm. Most teachers work well after these hours, in the summer, and on weekends. Isn't their time worth paying for? If this was an hourly position, Overtime or time and half would be paid (as well as state holidays and night weekdnd differential).
Nodler is a hypocrite!
Teachers should do everything possible to defeat him.
Parents of dissabled and handicapped, and special needs children should too.
This is no about face with damage control. It's a poorly conceived scheme to position himself as the champion of underpaid teachers. If you look at Nodler's initial messages on this, he never voices opposition to the program, but instead sounds the alarm that the legislature's funding mechanism is problematic. Now he comes to the rescue with a plan to save the program and be the champion of education, thereby gaining the votes of Randy Turner and all his fellow educators. Not exactly a Carl Rove-level scheme, but we can see what he's trying to do.
Anonymous 6:33
You are exactly right. And he puts the monkey on Nixon's back.
But remember, teachers are not stupid... and they'll remember...
If Career Ladder is vital,why have so many school districts including Springfield opted out?
Democrats have blamed the Republicans for suggesting funding may not be there...now Democrats have the opportunity to provide the answer and at least one Republican has vowed to support the Democrats when THEY find the money. So, let's see if the Democrats can find the money they have criticized Republicans for not finding. Here's their chance to be heroes to the whining school teachers in this state...great way to keep them located into the Dem. party.
isn't is so strange on how almost every difference of opinion on basically any situation becomes a republican or democrat issue. have we become so unable to have opinions without labeling it.
Not only is this not a situation of Democrats versus Republicans, but Republicans as well as Democrats have opposed the elimination of Career Ladder funding. No matter how many times you talk about how Nodler and Allen Icet had no choice but to send their letters, that is patently ridiculous. It was a political miscalculation and Nodler is trying...and failng miserably...to regain his fotting.
Icet and Nodler never proposed eliminating career ladder funding. They proposed ending the payment in arrears process. Randy makes references to legislators who, like Turner himself, responded to Icet and Nodler as if they had proposed eliminating career ladder rather than what they actually said.
anonymous 7:47
what you say is true because Randy doesn't have a clue about how to be honest and truthful...just mean and vindictive...to certain people or groups of people...
he bends the truth to his own shortsighted and narrow minded view of the world
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